Homestake experiment 2026-10-18
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The Homestake experiment, led by Raymond Davis Jr., used electron neutrino capture on chlorine to produce argon subject to radioactive decay. The 1968 paper reported an upper limit, rather than a resolved positive signal.[ref]
The underground target contained tetrachloroethylene. Circulated helium swept out argon, which was trapped on cooled charcoal, purified, and put into tiny proportional counters. Electron capture back to chlorine supplies the delayed readout. Added stable argon checked extraction recovery; background counting checked spurious pulses. The capture threshold is and the product's half-life is about 35 days. The chemical extraction retains neither the original neutrino's arrival time nor its direction.[ref]
Figure 1.
From chlorine capture to delayed radioactive-decay pulses
. Functional schematic of the Homestake experiment. The plotted curves are an illustrative radiochemical neutrino counting model, not measured data. Details.
The reaction selects electron neutrinos, and its threshold excludes the lowest-energy part of the solar neutrino spectrum. A low count alone cannot distinguish a low source neutrino flux, a changed neutrino flavor mixture, or an underestimated loss in extraction or counting. This is why chemical recovery tests and an independent water Cherenkov neutrino reconstruction are scientifically valuable.
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